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3/30/12

Ride In 3/30: tollo, tollere

If today's ride were a fruit, it'd be a tomato. Sometimes I think maybe the blog should just be pictures of the piece of fruit it most resembled. It wouldn't certainly save me time, though I imagine that not everyone wants to just look at pictures of food on the internet, as if it's some sort of amazing bit of creative self-expression. Oh, nevermind. I think I'll stick to the current format, namely using words instead of pictures since that was what catapulted me into the upper echelon the DC literary scene. It hasn't been easy adjusting to my new, famous lifestyle, but I'm doing my best. I think people expect a certain hauteur from their celebrities and I've tried to act accordingly. I've hired a valet for some reason. And I've been trying to duck the paparazzi, because that's been a huge problem for the past 24 hours or so- so many people trying to take pictures of me when I'm riding past the White House and Capitol. I'm still waiting for my gold bicycle to arrive and all my shirts are the tailor and will soon be embroidered "Best Local Bike Blogger" on one pocket and the same in reverse on the other pocket so I'll be able to read it when looking in the mirror, which is something I do a lot now. I've also asked the tailor to add extra pockets to make room for all of the embroidery. But in all seriousness (which is a first), I'd like to thank everyone for all of the kind words that has been left in the comments and spray painted on the side of my home. You're all exceedingly kind.
The first thing I can tell you about the ride in was that my fingers were cold and didn't really warm up over the course of the trip. I might have even wanted to wear gloves, but once you decide glove season is over, it's hard to go back. We lose more baseball players to cricket that way than anything else. Cold fingers (aside from being the worst James Bond villain ever) really sap my enthusiasm for bicycling riding and shiatsu massage, but mostly the bicycling riding.
This week has been oddly lacking in traffic, with low car and bike volume throughout, at least east of downtown. Not that I'm complaining. Thougn, bike traffic, for what it is tends to clump up the closer you get to the Capitol and today there were three of us riding through the patio/parking lot at about the same time. The other two got stuck behind a landscaping van, which I deftly avoided by taking a different path. Take that, the less deft! Actually, there wasn't really much they could do about it. I thought that the truck driver would yield to them as they were nearly on the path and he was turning onto a route clearly designated by pedestrians and bicyclists, but he didn't. I really don't like all of the motorized traffic on the Capitol grounds. Between the black SUVS, the landscaping crews, the state security apparatus, the other cars that have permission to pass through the perimeter, and the complete lack of visual cues about whether space is meant to be parking or road or both or neither, biking through it can be pretty harrowing. If I had my druthers (which I believe is a kind of old person candy), I'd pedestrianize the whole space. But I don't think Congress is that interested.
Along Pennsylvania, I noticed a familiar bike (it's always the bike you notice first) and then realized that a familiar person was on the familiar bike and I biked alongside of John and said hello. He was on the way to coffee and since we were heading the same place, it was really rude when I said "See ya sucker!," threw tacks in front of his tires, cackled and pedaled away. Ok, I didn't actually do that and opted for the much more social bike alongside and talk approach, which was considerably less maniacal. We rode on E Street, in front of (behind?) the White House and on the sidewalk and then up to Swing's, where we locked the bikes, went inside and ordered coffee, drank the coffee, conversed with others, and left. That's a rather truncated version of events.
You need to follow @ZombiesDC if you like zombie antics and, frankly, who doesn't?
I feel like my post-coffee rides are always the same and the descriptions of them tend to repeat. They're a bit rote, perhaps because I wrote them already. I always remark on how there are more cyclists out then I expect. Lately, I've mentioned that it's been colder than I wanted it to be, which is the same as what I've mentioned before that. How there are only a few crosstown cyclists, even though there's a bunch heading south. How barely anything happened on my ride up Massachusetts. So instead of rehashing all that again today, I'm just going to describe it thusly:

I think the primary occupation undertaken at the Naval Observatory is naval gazing.
I haven't seen any funny bumper stickers in a long time. Last night, I saw one that read "Chive," like the smallest edible onion. I think that the signal of the decline in American automotive culture is directly related to the lack of creativity in bumper stickers. Did bumper sticker makers get a bail out, too? I don't think so.